Contamination

Contamination is my idea of movie heaven. It is a shining example of the dubbed sci-fi/horror, Euro-trash spectaculars that were produced on a massive scale in the 70s and early 1980s before Europe turned its backs on cheap entertainment and focused on making dreary art-house fare. In my opinion, Contamination is a reminder of all that was great about this, now virtually extinct, film-making phenomenon.

Contamination is generally regarded as the embarrassing bastard child of Ridley Scott's "Alien". While the film does shamelessly steal certain elements from Scott's masterpiece, it is by no means a boring copy. The plot is so twisted and demented, not to mention ludicrous and ridiculous, that it transcends its "borrowed" elements and becomes something almost entirely unique and wonderful. For example, whereas Alien takes place on a deserted spacecraft, Contamination begins on a deserted boat, then moves to New York City, makes a detour via Mars and ends up in a Colombian coffee factory!

In addition to the utterly preposterous storyline, the joys of Contamination are manifold. There is the wonderful 80s synth score, some of the most atrocious acting committed to film, side-splitting dialogue, fantastically ancient cutting-edge technology (the science lab is a marvel of 70s/80s set design), fabulous euro-effects (among them glowing, musical alien eggs, exploding rats and better yet, exploding people) and then there is the Cyclops.

I could probably write a novel just on the glorious Cyclops. What a wonder of latex and wire! The film is worth viewing just for this magnificent creature, with its big, glowing eye and vile snout. This kind of craptastic special effect died a painful death with the introduction of CGI, and movies have been all the worse for it.

Forget the pretentious rubbish clogging up IMDb's top 250 and watch this stunning opus instead. I can not recommend this highly enough.

Being a child of the fifties, I grew up watching drek like this. The only difference I could see between this movie and something made in the fifties was the color.

I'm not sure who Luigi Cozzi is, but I am sure that he must be related to Ed Wood.

This movie was made in 1980, long after the special effects of "Plan 9 from Outer Space" should have been deep-sixed. The plot is very thin, the dialogue is embarrassing and the ending is both bad and predictable.

Having said all that, I had a great time watching it - it was on the El Rey channel which has become one of my guilty pleasure favorites. It's 90 minutes I will never get back but that's OK.

Luigi Cozzi's "Contamination" is a typical Italian "Alien" clone.The film itself is not bad,because it offers some cheap thrills with plenty of nasty gore.Ian McCulloch("Zombi 2","Zombi Holocaust")is quite memorable as a former astronaut,who returned from Mars.Like many Italian exploitation films made in the early 80's,the film begins on location in New York City.A bunch of mysterious eggs is discovered along with some mutilated bodies on a deserted ship.Getting too close to these eggs could be very deadly,because they spew some goo at you and make your body explode."Contamination" is a fun little film loaded with enough gore and violence to satisfy fans of Italian splatter.It's sometimes too talky and dull,but the beginning is great as is the ending.So if you're a fan of Italian low-budget exploitation give this one a look.Grab some beer and get ready for some thrills,chills and blood spills!

And Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Cheech & Chong.

This is the Italian version of Alien. The main actress is played, I believe, by Sigournia Weaverotta. The main actor is the highly esteemed Doug McClurio.

The badly dubbed dialogue has such gems as: "We have over 400 eggs" "Eggcelent"

The cast has all faded into obscurity except the alien creature who got a job making Slurm in the late 90s.

This Luigi Cozzi sci-fi horror movie gained some infamy here in the UK for being one of the films which made the infamous video nasty list, i.e. Films released on home video in the early 80's which were regarded as criminally obscene by the British authorities. Like many others from this list, it's hard to work out exactly how this one made such a notorious list, as while it is gory in places, it's quite far from being ultra-shocking stuff. It would probably be fair to say that this one takes some influence from Alien (1979) with its focus on scary throbbing eggs which explode, it also shows the influence of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) with the idea of alien mind control. A boat drifts into New York harbour with all its crew dead and mutilated. It soon becomes apparent that this was caused by the aforementioned strange eggs. Before long it becomes apparent that they are related to a recent Martian expedition in which one astronaut made odd claims about a cave full of eggs. The authorities get in touch with this now alcoholic ex-astronaut and a small team head to South America in search of the origin of the shipment of deadly eggs.

You wouldn't describe this as a stellar example of Italian horror but, for me, it is a perfectly entertaining one. The story-line, while influenced by other films, is distinctive enough to stand on its own, while the gory effects were executed well enough and kept things interesting. There was some attempt at generating tension with a suspenseful scene in a bathroom where a woman is trapped in the small room with a pulsating egg. While the final scenes with the cyclops were good enough too. Aside from its video nasty status, the film is perhaps best known nowadays for featuring a score from soundtrack legends Goblin. Its maybe not up to the standard of the work they did for Dario Argento but it is still very good nevertheless and adds some class to proceedings. It's hardly an actors film but it was good to see regular of Italian exploitation movies Ian McCulloch (Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979)) appear as the bitter astronaut. Overall, you could do worse than check out this bit of sci-fi/ horror hokum.